Hurt
by Etchers
Summary: Living in darkness in the Uchiha Shrine. Shisui Uchiha waits for the only person who can save him.


A/N: Hey, few things I have to explain about this fic. I hate author notes so I'll be as brief as possible.

This was written because of an idea I had regarding Sasuke going to The Uchiha Shrine because of the scroll he was given. Shisui's body was never found so this is a "what if?" fic.

I never like stating the obvious either but here you go.

**Characters in this story belong to Kishimoto. The song lyrics used in the story belong to Nine Inch Nails. **  
**I am not making any money from this in anyway. **

Hope you enjoy it!

* * *

_I hurt myself today to see if I still feel. I focus all the pain, the only thing that's real. The needle tears a hole. The old familiar stain. Try to kill it all away but I remember everything._

Every night, the ancestors leave me food at the alter, like clockwork it is there. Spread across the floor in a half moon shape. I used to believe that Itachi was keeping me alive. That he was arriving when I was asleep. Once, I stayed awake for so long… just waiting, but the food didn't come.

When I was a child, I spat at the ancestors, thinking they were nothing but cracked bone and memories but now I know that they are as real as I am. Their memory is just better kept.

I'm not sure how long ago I learnt how to keep time by counting the drops from the ceiling onto my bed. Blindness breeds invention it seems.

At four hundred thousand, seven hundred and eighty seven drips the food is usually there. Mainly it's bread and liver, sometimes a jam in a small hard jar. Once a large bottle of sake, that tasted like the cold water of the Nakano after war purged it with blood.

I've been waiting for so long that time seems to stop completely. When there is no rain, there is no time.

My shrine echoes with my breathing alone. I fingered the letters of my families graves. My drunken Mother, my depressed and broken Father are both gone but then again, isn't my gravestone there. "Uchiha Shisui" carved in granite, an empty grave beside the people Itachi butchered.

When I was young, I was told by my teacher that the Uchiha elders demanded a sacrifice before I was born. The practise was then thought inhumane and was stopped. Since then, the ancestors stopped gifting us with brilliance and luck. Our children were born blind and stupid. We were ruled over with tyranny by the Senju.

At the alter, I take out a kunai. I remember it's shape and colour better than I remember my own face. On the steps of my house, Itachi had presented it to me wrapped in a red ribbon.

I hack at my wrist, drawing blood. Spraying it across the alter in a wide arc.

I wonder how long I've been waiting for Itachi to return. The only thing I know is that he would not forsake me.

His name comes easily from my tongue as I speak to myself, my name seems like a lie. Maybe not even that exists anymore.

_I wear this crown of thorns. Upon my liars chair. Full of broken thoughts. I can not repair. Beneath the stains of time. The feelings disappear. You are someone else. I am still right here._

One night, when freezing air rushed through my home. Chilling me until my skin began to break. A hawk landed next to me while I was gathering rainwater from the leaks in the ceiling.

As I felt its warmth and feathers, I remembered life itself. I imagined soaring through the sky, touching the clouds as they condensed and poured. What must it be like to taste rain directly from its source?

Strangely enough, my training scrambled to the surface. Breaking the illusion of peace I suddenly felt. Reminding me of how if we were to come across an enemy messenger hawk, we were to smash its skull in and take its message back to the Hokage.  
In times of war, it was incredibly important. Wars had been won because of stolen information from messenger hawks. All ANBU received a messenger hawk and I remember suddenly Itachi's hawk, a majestic creature. They moved so alike you'd believe Itachi had wings.

I raised up my glass only to be stopped by a shriek from the creature. So alike a woman's cry that it caused the sockets of my long-lost eyes to ache. I wished so much that I could cry. Cry for what I nearly did, cry for all the lives I'd taken before I was trapped in this prison. Did my Mother scream like that when Itachi drove a kunai into her throat?

When I felt around the hawk's back, its messenger bag was empty. Maybe it had just flew in here to shelter from the storm. It was very tame for a messenger hawk, perhaps Konoha was so peaceful now that children could buy them to send messages to their friends. I laugh at the idea of it.  
Konoha was never peaceful. Suna would never give up in its need to overthrow the Hokage and have Fire Country.

A sudden thought struck me. So I went to my underground lair, pulling a granite tile up to slide through to the underground space that was now my home. I was then alone in the crypts of the ancestors with only their energy to guide me. Struggling through their piles of gifts. I grasped a piece of parchment and grabbing a quill, I scrawled characters wildly. Barely remembering how the shapes worked.

All It said was my location and who I was. That I knew secrets of the Uchiha that would interest him. Telling Itachi to come for me.  
He was always fond of riddles, even as an intelligent teenager they'd fascinated him. Then again, were there riddles now that Itachi couldn't solve?

I placed the parchment on the hawk and sent it away, into the storm that had just gotten more vicious. I asked the ancestors to give the bird their protection. I begged. Pleaded with them. Cut both my wrists and spread it at their feet.

"Uchiha Itachi" I said. "He is all I need"

That was a long time ago and still no word. I will put my trust in the ones that came before me. I promised I would not leave them, I will give them company even if the loneliness eats at my heart.

Itachi will come for me. I know he's alive because I can still hear his voice in my dreams, still remember the scent of his hair as it tumbled across my pillow.

I speak apologies to him into the night often.

"There was an evening when you were thirteen. The sunlight was receding from Konoha shrouding the village in a soft blue. You looked so beautiful then. Waifish features and the Uchiha lineage strong in your bones. Cheekbones sharp and high like a porcelain doll. Your voice was still a cross between feminine childishness and young adult. When you spoke, sometimes your voice cracked. The look that crossed your face was always of sheer embarrassment that you weren't in control of something. You used to order your kunai in descending height by your bedside table. Your room was so orderly that I couldn't believe anyone slept there at all. It was only when Sasuke arrived that anything even graced the floor. His stuffed toys forced into orderly lines like an advancing army.

I was your closest friend and you told me nothing about the Hokage's solution to the coup-de-tat. Now that I have had years to think about it, I did not deserve an explanation. I found out for myself and decided on my own plan, sacrificing both my eyes for peace. I now know that it wasn't enough.

It was the way the light reflected off the curve in your neck. How your collarbones jutted out in two angular points. I leaned in close to you, almost just to survey you closer. You grabbed me by the shirt and pulled me forward. Your mouth tasted like jasmine tea. I'm sorry that I had drank so much that night, I probably tasted like sharp rice-wine and tobacco.

I was your teacher and I crossed a boundary that night. We became lovers then when we shouldn't even have been friends. I kissed you on my porch. I let you kiss me… I still remember the feeling of your lips.

I pushed you further than you were willing to go and I'm sorry, Itachi, I'm so sorry for stealing such an important part of you.

I loved you and I didn't know how to love back then."

_What have I become? My sweetest friend. Everyone I know goes away in the end. And you could have it all, my empire of dirt. I will let you down, I will make you hurt._

_If I could start again. A million miles away. I would keep myself. I would find a way._

On a dark night, like the days. Like every second I have spent since I'd last seen Itachi.

I hear footsteps above my tomb. I see from the crack in the floor that many chakra types flow and cower above me. I recognise the snake mans flow but death lingers around the edges, a barely breathing corpse.

My senses, the ones that are left, focus on one man. A purple spine flowing out of a bleeding core. So like Itachi's that I run from my bed, something breaks and shatters on my feet. Bleeding, I run to him. Through the creaking tunnels, past stone coffins and discarded dreams and ambitions. Past the world they knew and the one that I've come to know.

When I reach the surface, Itachi turns to me. He stays still, doesn't even quiver with realisation. Do I look that different now? Has he forgotten me completely?

I grasp his face in my hand and the man before me freezes. An old signal that I'd give him mockingly as a child. Forcing him to stare straight at me. In the later days, it was a signal for me to sneak a kiss. This man just stands, static like a wild cat.

I search him for traces of love but it is then I notice that the body is different. The chakra runs and mingles but the only thing left of the one I love are his eyes.

"Sasuke…"


End file.
